SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/24/2024 8:41 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: PT-3
“An Uncomplicated Analogy”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 24:32
Message of the verse: “Now learn the parable from the fig tree; when its branch has already become tender, and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near;”
I ended a rather short SD yesterday by talking about
the Greek meaning of the word “learn” and the reason it was so short was
because my wife and I were going out to breakfast with some rather new friends,
and then we went out to eat lunch with some older friends of ours, not older in
age, but knowing them for a longer period of time. I can say that driving on Maui is very nerve
wracking as the traffic seems to always have too many cars going at any part of
the day.
Now back to the word learn as Jesus reminded them of a
commonly known fact about a fig tree in which He stated “when its branch has
already become tender, and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near;”
and this is nothing that His disciples did not already know but it was a part
of this parable that He is speaking to them.
Now we have a rather large maple tree in our back yard, a tree that when
we first moved into our house over 46 years ago I could touch the top of
it. In early spring the “sap” begins to
move up the tree in order to produce the leaves that usually come out in late
April or early May. The same is true
with this fig tree that the Lord is talking about as the sap begins to flow into
the branches, which make them tender, and new leaves appear on the tree, then “you
know that summer is near;” Even the
children knew this truth that a budding fig tree meant it was spring and that summer
was near, right around the corner.
Now
I have been studying the gospel of Matthew going on five years and one thing
that is true in Matthew’s gospel is that the figure of harvest represents
judgment, the time of separating unbelievers from believers and of condemning
the unbelievers to judgment. In the beginning
of Matthew we saw that John the Baptist spoke of the Lord’s coming with “His
winnowing fork…in His hand [to] thoroughly clear His threshing floor, and He
will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:12; cf. v. 10).
Next we want to look back at Matthew 9:37-38 “37
Then He said to His disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers
are few. 38 “Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into
His harvest.’” MacArthur adds “Without
saving faith in Him, those thousands of people, and millions of others like
them, were destined to judgment. That
field of people was ripening for God’s judgment just as a field of wheat or a
budding fig tree ripens for the harvesters.
In the parable of the wheat and tares Jesus spoke of the farmers’s
allowing the good wheat and the bad tares to grow together until the harvest
time, when the tares could be accurately identified and destroyed (Matt.
13:30).”
As
I conclude this last SD on this verse in Matthew I want to conclude it by again
quoting the last paragraph in MacArthur’s commentary to sum up his thoughts on
this verse: “In all of those instances,
the harvest symbolizes a time of reearding the righteous and punishing the
wicked. In this present parable of the
fig tree Jesus was simply illustrating to the disciples that, when the signs He
had just been describing begin to transpire, the time of His return will be
very near.”
Lord
willing in tomorrow’s SD I will begin to look at Matthew 24:33-34 as MacArthur
entitles this section “An Unmistakable Application.”
1/24/2024 9:12 AM
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